Swan Princes
by cynassa
Summary: Being a Supernatural AU inspired by the fairytale 'The Six Swans'. Sam has lost his brother to the land of Hell. His only hope seems to be to somehow break the curse afflicting the siblings of the Regent of the kingdom he's in. The Regent has promised anything the kingdom can give as payment. Sam/Gabriel.
1. Chapter 1

Sam lost a week to drinking and screaming and crying. That's what he assumed had happened anyway, he didn't actually remember anything except the smell of cheap booze and the overwhelming fear and the nearly physical pain of losing Dean.

On the eight day he vomited up blood and looked at it bleakly and thought about getting food. On the ninth day the innkeeper told him he'd only paid up for eight days and kicked him out unceremoniously. Sam took Impala's reins; he couldn't bear to ride her yet, and wandered towards the marketplace to find some food. That's how he saw the posters announcing the Regent's offer of anything his kingdom could provide to the person who could recover his brothers from their cursed state.

Sam looked at it meditatively and recalled Bobby telling him about how this kingdom had magicians in court positions, that the Regent was rumored to be a magician himself. That night he looked up what books he had on hand and decided to travel over. It was only about seven hours away. Sam thought about renting (or stealing) a horse for himself the way they usually did instead of riding Impala, but he gave up that idea.

"Do you know any way of bringing people back from the land of Hell?" Sam asked the council sitting before him.

The council had been contemptuously talking over him and asking for the next candidate until that moment when everyone went quiet at once. Sam felt all seven of them scrutinize him heavily. He knew why, very few people knew about Hell, that it was real and not just tales to get children to behave themselves. The few that knew about it didn't talk about it.

"Yes," the leader said, a dark woman sitting in the middle with three people on either side of her.

"Six of our seven princes are swans. Can you cure them, boy?" a man with papery white skin asked, wrinkling his nose as if he had smelt something terrible. "Magicians from three kingdoms have tried and failed."

"I'll do it," Sam said, his chin up, determined to succeed.

The council was in a furor, all of them coming up from their seats to tell the leader their views. Sam could hear the youngest of them, a beautiful blonde girl with clever eyes drawl out that he was a joke.

The leader heard them all and finally clapped once. All of them went quiet to listen to her, she spoke directly to Sam, "If you succeed, you'll get the secret to go into Hell. If you don't, you'll leave this kingdom and not return."

Her voice brooked no opposition. Sam nodded once and left, the terms were fine by him. He'd succeed.

It took him three months to find out how, and it was easy to see why trained magicians from three kingdoms had failed. A demon had set the curse and it would take demonic magic to bring them back. Sam felt sick at the idea of using the taint in his blood but if it helped bring back Dean, he would do it.

He went back to the council and told them he'd need to stay with the swans for an indeterminate amount of time and he would need to be accommodated because he wouldn't be able to speak during that time.

This time, there was still an air of contempt in the room but there was a level of uncertainty underneath it. Sam refused to tell them how he was going to remove the curse, he was certain if they found out they'd get someone else to do it and throw him out. Or possibly execute him for have demon blood. The leader told him he would have whatever he liked but he needed to succeed.

Thus began the twelve months Sam would need to be silent. At first, it was both difficult and lonely. He needed to pluck their feathers and weave them into cloaks with tendrils of his own magic in them making out the words that would cure them. Weaving was possibly the most boring job Sam could ever have imagined.

The swans didn't like him, most of them tried to peck him when he went to get their feathers except for one reddish-brown one that gave him sympathetic eyes and slept in his room sometimes, when she sensed that he was feeling exceptionally lonely. There was a brown one that didn't actively hurt him until he tried to pluck him, instead seeming to be rather curious about what he was doing, and there was an off-white one that looked down his beak at Sam. Sam noted that however many feathers he plucked, the birds never seemed to be denuded.

The routine of the days wore on his mind and made him restless but there was nothing he could do. Then one fine morning about five months later he heard cheerful whistling and he abandoned his loom to go out and see who was there. Everyone knew he and the swans and Impala were on this field and no one ever came except the servants who brought him the things to make his food, or clean clothes.

His first impression was a cheerful laugh and golden eyes blinking at him from some distance away.

"Seem to have lost my way," the man yelled, moving towards him, "Know where a fellow could get some food around here? I'm hungry enough to eat _you_ up, kiddo."

Sam only just stopped himself from laughing out loud, he grinned instead. The man seemed to carry around the air of a carnival. Loud, and brash and fun. He beckoned at him to come inside and the man climbed over the fence enclosing the stone house and the swan's lake and came to him. Sam took out the food he had made and set it on his small table and noted that he would have to make some more for dinner.

The man looked him over with an air of appreciation that made Sam's cheeks flush under his tan. The man looked at him curiously when he refused to answer any questions that needed him to speak, and asked him once whether he was capable of speech. Sam shook his head at that and the curiosity on the man's face deepened. He was an entertaining companion, telling Sam tales about the outside world and his own past that Sam was sure were exaggerated. He implied as much with a raised eyebrow which the man responded to by shaking a finger at him and telling him no one liked cynics.

Sam smiled so much that his cheeks hurt.

"I'm Loki," the man said, just before leaving. "I'll be hanging around near here. Probably for longer than I'd planned." He wagged his eyebrows at Sam to demonstrate why. Sam put a hand on his shoulder to stop him going and rushed back in to find a pencil and paper and scribble, 'I'm Sam' on it. He handed it to Loki, hoping that by some wild chance this man who seemed to be of the peasant classes would know how to read.

Loki looked at the paper with a slight frown, then a rather sweet smile curved up his lips and he looked up at Sam with bright eyes and said, "Nice meeting you, Sam."

Sam wasn't sure whether he should count on Loki coming back; he had met smooth talkers before. His brother had been one after all, Sam thought, suppressing the rage and pain that came with the thought.

Three days later, Loki came back, around the same time and grinned up at Sam and told him he had only come for the food. Sam fed him and listened to him talk and saw him playing with the swans who seemed to like him, and felt the world become just a little less dark.

Loki came around almost everyday after that and often tried to coax or tease or surprise Sam into talking. Sam tolerated it, only occasionally getting annoyed because Loki didn't know what was at stake. He only knew that Sam wouldn't talk or laugh or make any noise really. At times Sam wondered how long Loki would tolerate this state of affairs. Less than two months was the answer.

Two months after Loki first came into Sam's life, some seven months after Sam had begun his attempt to break the curse Loki and he were sitting by the lake, and Loki shooed away the swans coming up to be fed and then pulled Sam down to kiss him. Sam curled his fingers into Loki's tunic and licked at Loki's lips with his tongue to get him to open and Loki moaned. Sam jerked back when he could no longer stop himself from saying something.

Loki looked at him for a long moment and Sam's heart sunk at the way his lips were pressed together. He put one hand on Loki's shoulder but Loki shrugged it off and turned away from him, walking to the fence. Sam stayed where he was, recognizing the forbidding set of Loki's shoulders. Waves of frustration rolled in him because words were all he had, Dean and Dad- they were good with the big gestures and stuff. All Sam could do was talk. Now he didn't even have that.

After a few moments Loki turned back to Sam and said flatly, "I'm done with these games. Either talk to me now, come away with me. What are you doing here, alone with a bunch of…of swans!" he jerkily gestured at them and one or two of them honked at him uncertainly, seeming to be rather hurt by his dismissal.

"Or we're done," Loki finished, "I can't do this."

Sam looked at him and held a pleading hand out. Loki jerked forward almost unconsciously and then visibly held himself stiff. Sam dropped his hand. Lki looked at him with betrayal clear in his eyes.

"You're staying? You're not gonna quit this? You are going to…" Loki shook his head despairingly and said, "I don't know why I even bothered. Have your swans then kid, I'm done with this."

Sam ran after him and caught hold of him just beyond the fence because with Loki's shorter legs he had a considerable disadvantage. But when he had caught up, Loki just looked up at him challengingly, "Well? Convince me to stay! Go on, I dare you."

Sam leaned down to kiss him but Loki moved his head so that it fell on his cheek. Sam held him for long moments but Loki didn't soften by look or gesture, even his eyes were the hard gold of the summer's unforgiving heat and slowly Sam's hands fell away from Loki's shoulders. Loki turned around and walked away and Sam watched him go, heartsick and weary.


	2. Chapter 2

Sam worked steadily on, even when his hands bled from the magic or from the swans pecking him. They seemed to dislike him even more now that Loki had left, even the reddish-brown one stared at him disapprovingly or hissed at him when he went to sit by the lake where he and Loki used to feed them. He ignored it all, keeping his mind on Dean's screams as the blood-red dogs of the Hell-land fed on him. It fuelled him to work faster and longer even if it did exhaust him. Exhaustion was what he was aiming for in any case.

He was almost finished when some of the threads on the very first cloak tore. Sam guessed it was because it was the first one he had made and he had been clumsy with the loom. Sam couldn't risk doing a shoddy job so he swore mentally and tore it up and broke a chair in his anger then grimly went on to make another one.

Finally, at the end of twelve months, he was done. For a moment he stood with six whole cloaks spread around him and blinked down at his hands because he had nothing to do. It seemed impossible that he could leave this hut and this loom behind for always soon.

The next morning, he gave the servant who came to give him food a note for the council. To be precise, he left it out on the table and nodded at her to take it because none of the servants who came there would touch him or come within a feet of him if they could help it. He waited for the council to come and grimly wondered if they would hold up their end of the deal or just kill him the moment he had finished breaking the curse.

As it turned out, the council seemed none too sure about it themselves. The blonde girl looked him over and said it might not be a bad idea to let him go create havoc everywhere, her tone implying the exact opposite.

The leader eyed the cloaks and the demonic magic weaved into them with growing distaste and murmured, "It's disgusting."

Sam had an idea that the 'it' in this case was him. He raised a defiant eyebrow at them and handed her a note saying, 'We have a bargain, you keep your end- I'll keep mine.'

The leader looked furious for a brief moment then nodded sharply, "Do it then."

Sam turned around, hauled up the cloaks and tossed them on the respective swans until he got to the red-brown one where he hesitated then gently wrapped her cloak around her.

The air turned thick as if with smoke, the hut seemed to close in on them and Sam heard a voice croak out, "My feet hurt," and another snarl out, "He's turned my back raw with all the feathers he took."

A moment later, it was a clear spring evening again and before them stood two women and four men, dressed only in cloaks. The red headed one looked thoughtfully at Sam.

Sam looked back at her, somewhat embarrassed to realize how much comfort he had taken from her over the past year and she suddenly smiled, "Hello, Sam," she said in a voice rough from disuse and something in the tone struck Sam as so familiar that it made his heart ache.

He cleared his throat when he couldn't get his voice to work the first time, "Hello."

"I'm Anna," she held out a hand for him to shake. Sam took a firm hold of it and felt the ache dispel (or possibly increase) at the warmth of another human against his skin after so long.

"Anael," the off white one corrected, and he looked at Sam, "I'm Michael, I'm the eldest. Thank you for saving us." They grasped each other hands in a brief shake but Sam could see the heartfelt gratitude on Michael's face.

The brown one, Sam thought it was the brown swan because he had the same curious stare, held out a hand too as awkwardly as if he wasn't quite sure it wouldn't turn into a wing any second. Sam took it and held it and the man half smiled and said, "Sam. Thank you," in a surprisingly deep voice.

The others also introduced themselves and thanked him- Raphael in her deep, sincere voice, her twin, Israfel echoing her and sheepishly adding his apology for the scar on Sam's left elbow and a soft rumble from Uriel who nevertheless looked wary.

Raphael looked at Michael and suggested that Sam come to the castle in a meaningful way that sent Sam's warning bells ringing.

"I need to be going, I need the secret. I've spent so long on this already." Sam said, rounding on the council, shoes squeaking against the stone floor as he strode towards them.

One of the council murmured something in the leader's ear, and she glanced up and looked at something behind Sam's back. Sam twisted around but whatever was being said had finished, everyone was looking at him thoughtfully.

"It requires morning light in any case, to pass the knowledge on without transporting ourselves into a dangerous situation." the leader said, slowly, "Spend the night in the castle since their majesties wish you to. Tomorrow we will keep our end of the bargain."

Sam didn't want to but he didn't feel up to a fight, so he went with them and hoped they weren't planning on killing him. Anna smiled reassuringly at him intermittently throughout the evening, over the royal family's dinner table. Sam could see that everyone was uneasy and watchful. He asked after the Regent, who had not yet appeared to celebrate the return of his siblings and was met with several evasive non-answers.

Israfel said, "His sorrows are manifold, he's drowning them somewhere else," in a harsh voice. Uriel said something Sam couldn't hear and Raphael turned to him angrily from her twin's side.

"He would have let us rot!"

Michael looked at her sternly and she quietened, all of them fell silent.

"He did what he thought was right," Anna said finally and that seemed to be the end of the matter. Sam's mind was taken up with his forthcoming quest so he shrugged off the matter as being some sort of family problem.

So it didn't even cross his mind when he was in the room he had been offered in the castle and the thick decorative drapery on one wall moved and someone came through. He just went for the nearest knife and congratulated himself grimly for staying awake thinking he might be attacked.

Dimmed golden eyes and mobile lips pulled down at one corner greeted him and for a moment Sam wanted to rush over and just curl around Loki and never let go. Then he took in the rich clothes and the way Loki stood, just a little bit straighter than he had when pretending…_pretending_ to be a wanderer with no aim in life.

"Who are you?" Sam said, his voice shaking, "Your name isn't Loki, is it?"

Those lips twisted into something wry and he said, "Gabriel. They call me Gabriel. King Michael's regent for this kingdom for these past four years."

Sam felt slightly sick as he realized that he had recognized Loki… Gabriel in Anna's way of speaking; that was why he had liked it so. He said, "I don't get it. You must have known what I was doing. You must have known I couldn't speak because I was trying to save your siblings. What were you thinking?"

Lok…no, _Gabriel_ looked grim as he said, "Oh, I knew. They told me, the council, after they were done talking to you. I was away when they met you and they didn't want to wait. They didn't know who you were, didn't care even after I told them. I remembered the stories about someone selling their soul- a Winchester. I would have found some other way of getting them back. Giving you that secret is too dangerous. I tried to fix things as soon as I got back."

"So that was you fixing things." Sam said, quietly.

Gabriel looked so very sorry for a moment, as if he were the one who had been betrayed, lied to. As if he were the one who had just had his heart broken a second time.

Gabriel couldn't meet Sam's eyes any longer, he looked out the window as he said, "You're going to try to get your brother back, and you're going to break the world kid."

"Don't call me that," Sam said, surprising himself with the vehemence in his tone.

A flash of pain crossed Gabriel's face again but he said, forcefully, "Listen to me, Sam. You go in there, you will break the world."

Sam wanted to say that he didn't care. Instead he said, as reasonably as possible, "If your council knows and doesn't care, maybe it isn't that big a deal."

"They don't care," Gabriel yelled and Sam stiffened at the suddenness of it. "None of them care!"

Gabriel made a wide arc with one hand, and said, "They wouldn't... they would live."

Sam frowned at him then slowly shook his head. "I don't understand anything. Your council doesn't listen to you and they don't care that I'll break the world?"

Gabriel looked down at the floor for a moment, looking as if he were debating with himself, then he looked up and said, "I'll tell you everything."

He licked his lips and started, in a careless voice that Sam knew was artificial, "The council is allowed a lot of power, you saw. Do you know why?"

Sam shook his head again and impatiently said, "Get on with it."

"My brother's ruled for over three thousand years," Gabriel said flatly.

Sam gaped at him and tried to speak but Gabriel motioned at him to shut his mouth.

Gabriel went on, "The council chooses itself and its successors. Every once in a while there is a change and the new council crowns the King. You're too young to have seen a coronation but it's always the same. It's done up on the roof here, high up, and magic makes it a rainy, foggy day. No one ever sees the king so no one knows that it's always the same man."

Sam opened his mouth to protest again, that someone would have noticed. Some magician would have seen something odd about the entire thing in three thousand years.

Gabriel seemed to know what was coming, he said, "Magic keeps everyone complacent and we're very careful. Why do you think we needed you? You aren't a magician. There are trained people we could have asked but it was too dangerous, we couldn't risk the secret like that. The council has us under a sword. They let it out and there would be large scale panic. The people would flee, every kingdom nearby would turn on us."

Sam sat down heavily on the bed; it was beginning to make some kind of horrible sense.

Gabriel fiddled with his sleeve before going on, "I don't have six siblings, I have seven. One of them was named Lucifer."

Sam's breath caught, "The ruler of Hell?"

"Hell is his prison." Gabriel said, looking bitter, "Michael and Lucifer fought because Lucifer wanted to clear away the aristocracy- _kill_ them- and Father told Michael to throw him out. So he's imprisoned there. If you go in, he'll be able to break out and kill as he likes. He'll break the world. And no one cares because it'll mean our family will rule everything, and they want that. I think they _want_ a war."

Gabriel looked at him, pleadingly, but Sam looked back steadily, begging him to understand. He couldn't leave Dean in there.

"You're going to go aren't you?" Gabriel asked, it was barely a question, he sounded defeated.

"I'm sorry," Sam offered, spreading his hands in a helpless gesture. He was too, but he needed to do this.

Gabriel closed his eyes, his shoulders slumped and his head bowed. He looked the very picture of despair.

Sam didn't know what to say. He tried to think of some way to apologize or get Gabriel to understand.

The Gabriel straightened up, rolled his shoulders and said, "Then I'm coming with you."

"Really?" Sam asked, and his joy was embarrassingly evident. He went over to Gabriel and hesitantly touched his cheek.

Gabriel still looked unhappy but one corner of his mouth quirked up at Sam's touch, "I'm not letting you go into Hell alone, kiddo."


	3. Chapter 3

"Don't look anywhere else. There will be demons tempting you." Gabriel told him, eyes anxious, "Follow your amulet blindly, you're very lucky to have something he's been wearing so long. I'll be with you. You'll probably hear your brother cry out for you or something."

"But it won't be him, I get it, Gabriel," Sam said impatiently.

"You don't," Gabriel said flatly, "It'll be unbelievably realistic, and you won't be able to distinguish the difference and if you step away from the path I won't be able to see to stop you. You have to get this into your head right now or we'll all be in a mess."

Sam stopped short, "You won't be able to see?"

Gabriel looked uncomfortable as he said, "You have demon blood. That protects you. I can't go in there without a blindfold. I'd go blind."

Sam didn't know how he managed to say, "Then you should stay back," but he did, even with fear gripping at him.

Gabriel quirked a smile and said, simply, "No."

Sam opened his mouth to argue and Gabriel waved it off and told him to hurry up with making himself all pretty, it was getting late and they should have been with the Council ten minutes ago. Sam got so heated up in arguing, while running down to the underground chambers, whose fault it was that they were late that he couldn't pick up the threads of the other argument until they were in the chamber.

Sam made one last attempt when the blond girl was dragging away Gabriel to put a blindfold on him. The girl shoved him back with a delicate flick of two fingers. Gabriel glanced back at him, and Sam was the last thing he saw before the blindfold went on.

Sam didn't know precisely what happened. With Gabriel coming along, the process was different and the council had firmly said that they would send both of them with protections, there was no way was Sam allowed to do the magic with Gabriel's life in the balance. There were several chilly glances that told Sam that no one was pleased with the business.

Raphael and Israfel stepped up suddenly. Israfel said, "Anael thinks it would be wise if…" he glanced at his twin who was scrutinizing Sam. She took out a vial and handed it to Sam.

"We didn't have time to make very much. Be careful," she said, brusquely.

Sam nodded.

The humming stopped and Sam stepped out into Hell. It was worse than he had imagined, at every step he saw ten people he knew begging him to save them and a hundred people he didn't know screaming and pleading. His father, Jess, even some half-remembered sense of his mother's voice haunted him. And Dean. With every step he saw Dean- on meat hooks, being burned, reminding him that he had done this for Sam.

Gabriel was beside him, holding his hand and walking steadily and Sam let that trusting touch comfort him and moved as the amulet warmed.

Then a chasm came up in front of them- as suddenly as if it had just been formed- and Sam stopped and looked down, it seemed measureless and there was smoke rising up and they would have to climb down into it to find Dean. He took an even tighter hold on Gabriel's hand and led him down, the other hand finding handholds wherever he could event though the walls of Hell burned his hand from the inside out; Sam felt like his hand had fallen off but he could see that the skin was whole.

Then Gabriel let go with a jerk, Sam tried to grab on to him but the smoke rose up like a living creature and curled up around Gabriel and into Sam's eyes, blinding him for a crucial moment.

Then Sam saw Gabriel, lying several feet below him on an outgrowth of the walls of the chasm and calling weakly for help. His voice was fading away and Sam knew with frightening certainty that if he didn't get that vial to Gabriel right then, Gabriel would die.

He rushed down as fast as he could, calling to Gabriel to hold on, just hold on until Sam could get there. Gabriel was breathing so shallowly that Sam wasn't sure he was breathing at all. Sam dropped heavily to his knees and reached out a hand, and had it wildly knocked away.

Gabriel was on one knee in front of him, waving him away blindly with the other Gabriel- the one that had been lying down- held back with one hand and then the other Gabriel dissolved partly into smoke and the blindfold dissolved and black eyes stared out at them and Sam grabbed at Gabriel, the real Gabriel, and pulled him away. The demon snarled at him but had to stay where it was, if it couldn't tempt Sam to go to it- it failed.

"I'm sorry I couldn't get to you sooner. I couldn't see, this blindfold won't come off," Gabriel said, waving his hands weakly.

Then Sam saw Gabriel's hand- it was withering away wherever it had touched the demon. He pushed Gabriel down, and was vaguely surprised when he got out the vial and his hands were steady. He poured it out over the hand and saw the bone grow back but there wasn't enough for the skin, in a panic he called up the vestiges of his power and drove it into Gabriel's hand. His sight blurred and when he came to, Gabriel was holding him with both hands, one was a normal hand and the other felt rough to the touch. But at least it was there.

Sam recovered further and realized that Gabriel was shouting at someone to keep away, that Sam wasn't approaching.

Sam struggled up to stand guarding Gabriel and saw the blonde girl from the council. Her eyes were black.

"You're a demon," Sam said.

"Thanks, I hadn't noticed," she said.

Sam tried to bring up his power but couldn't, he swayed in place with the effort.

"I'm the one who fixed his blindfold so it wouldn't come off, I just saved him from burning up. Be grateful and come with me," she said, impatiently, shaking her hair back.

"Ruby?" Gabriel said, from behind Sam.

"Yes. And I just saved your backside, risking mine! So can we please get on with it? I know a shortcut to where his brother is." Ruby said.

"Alright," Gabriel said. "But if you're lying, I will rip you apart myself." His voice had deepened by the end of the sentence and Sam felt a frisson from the power he had put in it.

Ruby snorted but Sam could see that she looked wary. They ran through rooms of red and black and dark green ooze and then they reached a room that seemed to be exactly the same as all the others but Sam could feel the amulet burning into him and he looked around wildly. He couldn't recognize Dean from the other raw, flayed souls there at first but then he did.

He tugged at Dean's chains and couldn't get it off, then Gabriel's power seeped into his hands and strengthened them and the chains splintered into pieces then crumbled into dust. Sam grabbed Dean as he fell down and held him as tightly as he could.

Dean said, in a rough voice that broke away into coughs at points, "You're another one of them aren't you? I'm not doing it, I'm not going to be a demon's _student_; I know Sammy's not here." Sam just held on and wept silently.

There was a humming around them and then they were back in the castle.

Sam wandered over to the room where Gabriel was recovering leaving Dean with three healers and Raphael and Israfel supervising. To be precise, they threw him out the door with magic and told him flatly that his magic was interfering with theirs and making a new body practically from scratch was _difficult_.

That hand of Gabriel's was never going to be the same; Sam curled his hands around it and massaged it gently and tried to figure out how to apologize.

"Not your fault," Gabriel told him, "Feel free to go on with that," he waggled his eyebrows down at their joined hands, "But what I did, I chose it. It's not your fault I got hurt."

"I shouldn't have let you come," Sam said.

Gabriel raised an eyebrow, as if to say, 'could you have stopped me?' and Sam looked down at the hand that would probably always hurt Gabriel a little and wished he could have.

Gabriel raised his other hand and gently flicked Sam's cheek, "Worry about yourself and your brother, I am…" he looked away and said it so softly that Sam had to strain to hear him, "I would have given a lot more to keep you safe."

Sam kissed Gabriel's hand, as gently as he could because he didn't know how to say _I love you_.


End file.
